It’s quite a paradox, actually. Companies seeking the breakthrough product or technology that will set them apart from the industry use the same mind-numbing mush of cliches to encourage creativity: hackathons, innovation centers, white boards, prizes, etc.

And then there’s Adobe Systems. The San Jose software maker may just have the craziest, most anarchic approach to innovation in corporate America.

When it comes to culture, the company that makes familiar programs like Photoshop and Illustrator is outdisrupting Google, Facebook and Apple, Silicon Valley’s typical leaders in creativity.

Called Kickbox, Adobe’s approach is something of a game that allows any of its employees to develop an idea — whether or not the idea is related to the employee’s expertise or regular work responsibility. Employees can try, and fail, as many times as they want without their boss knowing.

“Kickbox empowers employees to be as innovative as they would like to be,” said Mark Randall, chief strategist and vice president of creativity who created the program.

Red box, blue box

Here’s how it works: an employee gets an idea, anything from a tweak to an Adobe product to a new area of business for the company. The employee then receives a “red box” containing reference cards that list six things the employee must accomplish before advancing to the next level. Most important, the box comes with a $1,000 prepaid debit card that the employee can spend to validate the idea.

After gathering initial data, the employee then approaches any senior director or above to “sponsor” the project, using money from that executive’s budget. After securing a sponsor, the employee receives a “blue box,” whose contents Randall won’t disclose.

So far, Adobe has given out about 1,100 red boxes. It’s a kind of internal crowdsourcing of ideas, which have produced innovations like a music sync feature and Adobe Lightroom, next-generation software to edit digital photographs. More remarkably, Adobe does not keep track of the ideas that failed, as a way to encourage people to keep trying. Indeed, half the employees who received blue boxes were already on their second red box.

In truth, Kickbox is trying to create a system for innovation without the system. In many companies, employees must first persuade layers of managers to green-light a project before receiving any resources. With Kickbox, employees receive money up-front — no questions asked.

“Systems can get in the way of people who see an opportunity,” Randall said. “People believe they can control innovation. But we believe innovation is a force of nature that we can’t control.”

Adobe’s program has attracted considerable interest from companies hoping to copy it. But they always balk at the same thing: those $1,000 debit cards.

When you think about it, though, Adobe’s approach makes economic sense. U.S. companies spent about $650 billion on research and development last year, compared with $400 billion in 2005, according to a report by consulting firm Strategy+Business. Often, companies have very little to show for the money.

“We’re not that good at predicting whether something is going to work or not,” said David Robertson, a professor of practice who teaches innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. “So why not spend $1,000 a thousand times versus spending $1 million 10 times?”

Robertson did caution that Kickbox still requires safeguards. For instance, Adobe employees seeking to validate a project can try it out with actual customers. The risk, of course, is the possibility that the employee embarrasses the company with a bad or inappropriate idea, Robertson said.

But Adobe trusts its employees, Randall said. In fact, the goal of Kickbox is not necessarily to create new products, but rather a culture of people willing to think creatively and take risks, he said.

“We’re creating innovators, not innovation,” Randall said.

Another impressive Kickbox feature is its ability to inspire employees to rejuvenate their careers at Adobe.

Finding challenges

It’s all too easy for workers to grow restless with a job that no longer challenges them. Employees may try something new and discover, perhaps to their own surprise, that they possess other skills and passions.

Take Hina Naqvi.

She joined Adobe as a software developer in 2000. Last year, Naqvi requested a red box because she wanted to create software to help users identify the right template for a specific document.

Until then, “I had many new ideas but no time and resources to actually pursue them,” she said.

As Naqvi worked to validate her idea, she spoke to product designers, researchers and customers. Although the template software didn’t work out, Naqvi enjoyed the experience so much that she left programming to become a product manager.

“I was very happy with my old job,” Naqvi said. “But the Kickbox project inspired a kind of passion I hadn’t felt for several years. It opened up a whole different side of me I never experienced before.”